Main Humans Are The Real Monsters Discussion

There should be Real Life Examples in this page. Namely, examples of our own behavior that make us, as humans ourselves, ask whether we are Exactly What It Says on the Tin, "real monsters". Consider, if nothing else: how many sitcoms have laugh tracks that play when something uncomfortable, painful or humiliating happens to someone...and people at home do laugh. In other words, we often see outright cruelty, in myriad forms, as funny.

SeptimusHeap

03:21:31 AM Jul 23rd 2014

No, this trope is specifically about humans in relation to other sentient species. Without a sentient species to compare us to, we can't qualify for this trope. Also, preaching better behaviour is not what this wiki is for.

Should the entire Headscratchers section of this trope be removed or at lease cleaned up? R Ight now it is full of thread with some tropers complaining about how horrible humans are in real life without any relevance to this trope and should be moved to the Humans Are Flawed section instead.

dnzrx3

10:41:41 AM May 13th 2011

Agreed.
Should we have a time table on this?

chankljp

02:27:07 AM Jun 3rd 2011

I vote for a total removal of the entire Headscratchers section of this page. As much as I have enjoyed debating other tropers there, it is now entirely off topic with people complaining about how humans are all evil monsters that deserve to be wiped out and no long have anything to do with this trope (which should be about humans being worst compared with ALIENS).

"Men are evil, hatred in their eyes, lies on their lips, betrayal in their hearts. You will learn one day, great king, that there are three things that men respect; the lash that descends, the yoke that breaks and the sword that slays. By the power and terror of these you may conquer the Earth."

Later, the Genie has his say on the subject, after Abu's third wish goes awry:

"You're a clever little man, little master of the universe, but mortals are weak and frail. If their stomach speaks, they forget their brain. If their brain speaks, they forget their heart. And if their heart speaks, they forget everything."

Calvin and Hobbes brings this theme up a lot. One particular strip reveals that Calvin might have gotten his misanthropic viewpoint from his parents, albeit for different reasons. Calvin's parents don't like people because they feel that manners and politeness are declining, whereas Calvin himself doesn't like people because of humanity's conflicted relationship with nature. As he says in one strip, "I think the best sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the Universe is that none of it has tried to contact us yet".

Or 'do you think Satan exists, that there is a being devoted to making mankind commit evil' Hobbes: 'I'm not sure people need the help'.

Hobbes is named after philosopher Thomas Hobbes, known for his misanthropy.

It helps to note that Bill Watterson, the artist, is a noted misanthropist and an extremely Reclusive Artist, and most of the characters are simply author avatars espousing his views on things he dislikes in general.

Pride of Baghdad: Four lions living in the Baghdad zoo get bombed on, talk to a turtle who whines about how human pollution killed his entire family in previous war. They're shot dead by soldiers, who were spooked at the sight of them. The animals, however, were pretty damn bad at this.

Every single comic made by Jhonen Vasquez. Interestingly, Jhonen is a fairly cheerful guy in real life, which may indicate that this is just the brand of humor he likes as opposed to a statement. He's also stated that he doesn't mean to make fun of any one group in particular, pointing out that you can find a bit of nastiness in every sub culture.

In The Punisher one-shot "The End," Frank Castle's last surviving act in the wake of a catastrophic nuclear war is to wipe out the architects behind said war - the only known surviving humans in the world. After killing them, he explains his actions simply by saying "The human race. You've seen what that leads to." Possibly subverted by the fact that Frank Castle (usually) isn't portrayed as completelysane.

Zombies: A Record of the Year of Infection has No Ending, as the Apocalyptic Log, like most such logs, suddenly cuts off. However there's a strong implication that the people in the supposed safe haven the protagonist reached killed him. We also encounter a rather unpleasant gang of raiders who kill and torture for fun, and, if the protagonist's theory about zombies came about is right, we also have the company that was putting C-88 in food.

Not sure about the Seven Soldiers example, since the entry doesn't explain whether the work includes non-human sentients or not. Leaving it in for now; someone who knows the work can deal with it.

OK, starting a clean-up of the examples that don't compare humans to other sentients. (Also, there are a lot of works here that I don't know, so if I cut ones that are valid examples, or leave invalid examples, just fix that.

Inappropriate animé/manga examples:

Rau Le Cruset from Gundam SEED believes that humans are selfish greedy bastards who will do anything to get ahead even if it means slowly wiping themselves out in the process, and justifies this viewpoint with both Kira's existence and his own existence as both were born through genetic manipulation and cloning respectively, this belief is also what drives him to want to wipe out humanity entirely taking the "I'm taking you with me" ethos to its extreme logical conclusion.

The scary part? The show universe itself is so chock full of bigots and assholes he's doesn't really look all that incorrect! In fact, considering all the racism and blind hatred fueling the wars (which both sides are aware of and DEFEND as virtuous, especially at their highest levels of authority), he really has a very good claim for arguing his point is pretty valid, and this is what motivates the antagonist from the sequel to enact a plan to prevent such things from happening again, because he agreed humans became bastards as a result of said hatreds.

This is probably the entire point of the Universal Century Gundam series, where there are more selfish and cruel people in the world then kind, noble and selfless ones, and Complete Monsters are incredibly common as leaders. It is also used by Char Aznable as an excuse to drop Axis on Earth. It gets worse right after the disappearance of Zeon.

The manga series Parasyte seems to believe in this Trope so much that the only way that the horrible damage humans wreak on the environment can be lessened is for nature to introduce a new apex predator to the biosphere to keep humanity in check.

We're changing the trope description to better show Humans Are Bastards' original purpose as well as better outline the distinction between related tropes that this constantly gets confused for. If anyone wants to help with cleaning up misattributed examples and wicks and direct them to a more appropriate trope page, your assistance will be greatly appreciated.

Wasn't the whole reason Real LifeHumans Are Bastards removed because the whole point of the trope is to compare human bastardry to other sentient beings? Since we don't know of any other sentient beings to compare ourselves to, putting a Real Life version would not be in the spirit of the trope?

Dr.Shadow

05:45:49 AM Aug 21st 2010edited by Dr.Shadow

If I recall correctly, the trope originally allowed Real Life examples. But it ended up becoming absurdly long. And it was nowhere near done before it was deleted.

edit: fixed a trope link and added some.

Ironeye

11:22:46 AM Nov 14th 2010

We also need to clean out the examples. Quite a few are just cases where most of the (human by default) characters are evil, with no non-human beings to contrast.

StClair

08:12:53 AM Mar 22nd 2011

Considering the reports that dolphins engage in sexual harassment and/or assault, and various examples of (bad) primate behavior, perhaps it really is true that Sapients Are Bastards. If so, one less reason to look forward to First Contact...

Inferus54

04:55:32 AM Jul 23rd 2014

Would it count if it was say earth humans vs alien humans? For example, the ISA vs Helghast in Killzone. The ISA are the "good" humans whose faces you can see, where the "bad" humans are the Helghast, who are normally thinly veiled nazi/soviet/PRC Gas Mask Mooks. If it weren't for their backstory,British accents, and the fact that a few of the Helghast leaders are shown maskless there would be little to no indication that the Helghast are human. Hence why Helghast are often assumed to be aliens by people who haven't played the game.

SeptimusHeap

08:43:16 AM Jul 23rd 2014

A bit late to post here, but no, that sounds more like a subspecies conflict.

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